ipl-logo

The Great Gatsby Dust Analysis

350 Words2 Pages
Nick uses the phrase “foul dust” which shows up many times throughout the book. Dust is a symbol of unachievable dreams and as much as Gatsby dreamed to get daisy back, his dream was unachievable. Later in the book Nick goes with Tom to visit his mistress (Myrtle) and he describes the town and the people as full of dust. At the end of the book when myrtle dies; nick states, “Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust” (55). Myrtle tried to get away from her past of being poor but even when she died the dust representing her unachieved goals still followed her. Next Nick uses the terminology “wake of his dreams” Gatsby never fully reached his dreams and Nick mentions this
Show More
Related
203 Words | 1 Pages

Admired Author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, in his renown novel, The Great Gatsby, emphasizes the emotional state of Nick after the passing of his close friend. Fitzgerald’s main purpose is to reveal the gloomy, final thoughts that still linger in Nick’s mind about the demise of Gatsby and his elaborate lifestyle. His strong use of imagery creates a heartrending attitude in Nick which grasps on to the mind of the readers. Fitzgerald presents the paragraph by using various types of syntax to contrast the past thoughts of Gatsby and his house from the melancholy truth of the present. Fitzgerald has Nick illustrate the great memories he had at Gatsby's house when describing his saturday nights in New York by the “gleaming, dazzling parties” that were

Read More
752 Words | 4 Pages

Comedian George Carlin, once said,” That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.” In the Great Gatsby, Nick is there alongside Gatsby, as he tries to fulfill his American Dream of being with Daisy Buchanan once more. However, due to a misunderstanding, Gatsby is killed by George Wilson, and is unable to accomplish his American Dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s use of imagery, a gloomy tone and the symbol of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg is able to prove that the American Dream is not obtainable. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses tons of imagery in The Great Gatsby to describe the events in the book.

Read More
1192 Words | 5 Pages

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby highlights how Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick had unrealistic dreams and expectations, originating from pressures of society and individual desires, that ultimately led to failure and disillusionment in the pursuit of The American Dream. Jay Gatsby’s American Dream is to win back his long lost love, Daisy Buchanan, and to achieve social and financial success in order to attain the status and acceptance of the wealthy elite of the 1920s. In this chapter, as Gatsby and Nick are talking about the past, Gatsby reminds Nick of his American Dream and how he wants to change the past. As he tells Nick, “Can’t repeat the past? He cried incredulously.

Read More
291 Words | 2 Pages

The “Jazz” age was the product of a post World War I sentiment within America that revolved around living life to the fullest while it lasted. This causes the rich to be even more extravagant, thus outlining the divisions between the poor and the rich at this time which some see as an afront to God. Such a division is well represented in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, through several symbols. Within The Great Gatsby prominent symbols are used to portray this topic, such as the oversized billboard, a green light, and the valley of ashes. Although billboards are a staple in advertising, the billboard in question seems to hint at a power greater than capitalism.

Read More
915 Words | 4 Pages

Gatsby failed to realize that his dream was unrealistic. Before he left for war, Gatsby attained his dream. He was happy, but he did nothing to keep his dream and did everything to lose it. Gatsby failed to dream again and to strive for a new dream.

Read More
1718 Words | 7 Pages

Coasting my rusty black Chevy Cavalier into my garage parking spot after school while playing my music on full is apparently frowned upon. My stiff gray colored neighbor Miss Thelma sits on her porch awaiting my exit from the blasting loud vehicle while probably prepping her words to shun me for my actions. She rises from her perch and moves to make contact with me as I hurriedly rush away with my schools stuff. Her words were peaceful about my fun music choices but as I predicted, “...next time, wont you turn it down? Your gonna lose your hearing by fifty.”

Read More
940 Words | 4 Pages

However, another character in the book, Nick, had goals that were very different from Gatsby’s goals. Instead of being rich in the city, he wanted to move back to his original home in the west. One could say that Nick also achieved the American Dream, because he too never stopped

Read More
732 Words | 3 Pages

In the Great Gatsby, Nick is quoted as saying that "No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart". It is to be interpreted that Nick meant that reality can never truly measure out to what one wants the outcome of dream to be. This statement often falls true into many statements that we can see in our daily lives- when a thought, or rather dream comes one wants to chase after it no matter the struggle to get to it and sometimes those dreams that took so long and were so hard to grasp are not as amazing as they were once thought to be. King's observation of how Americans "are to busy dreaming...fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be...", exemplifies the fact that everyone has

Read More
708 Words | 3 Pages

However, as now Gatsby is dead, Nick visits the porch and looks across the water. Green light will still exist because Gatsby is not the only one who always try hard to reach dreams. It applies to the era of the whole book (1920s), and to us. People during the 1920s had the dream to become rich from the “American dream”, and we too, will also have dreams we would like to

Read More
660 Words | 3 Pages

Jay Gatsby is the protagonist of the story and he is holding on to an unattainable dream. Throughout the book, Fitzgerald

Read More
867 Words | 4 Pages

In the text, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a wide range of literary techniques to convey a lack of spirituality, and immorality. Techniques such as characterisation, symbolism, and metaphors help to cement the ideas Fitzgerald explores. However, there are some features to this world that redeem it. Which are displayed through expert execution of techniques like characterisation, contrast, and repetition. The world of The Great Gatsby is home to many morally corrupt and spiritually empty characters however, the world itself is not a spiritual and moral wasteland.

Read More
1387 Words | 6 Pages

The novel ends on an irresolute note with Nick saying: “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And one fine morning——” (Fitzgerald 180). The “green light”, which serves as a symbol for everything Gatsby strived for in his lifetime, lingers even after his death, convincing more people, including Gatsby, that the American Dream is still possible. Even after his demise, he holds a strong faith in the American Dream and the fraudulences that sustains the Dream, which suggests that he is not great because he is still imperceptive of the quixotic nature of the American Dream.

Read More
797 Words | 4 Pages

The seasons were changing from summer to fall, and on the day of his death it was said to be a warm day with yellowing trees and falling leaves. He was awaiting a phone call that came too late. So while he floated in this pool unaware that it would be his first and last time, Nick Carraway thinks, “I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass” (Fitzgerald 169).

Read More
1659 Words | 7 Pages

" Under the circumstances Nick hardly expects any section of Gatsby's fabulous story to be true..." (Donaldson 161). Gatsby manipulates Nick throughout the novel, causing

Read More
951 Words | 4 Pages

In the last passage of The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the reader gains insight into Gatsby’s life through the reflections of Nick Carraway. These reflections provide a summary of Gatsby’s life and also parallel the main themes in the novel. Through Fitzgerald’s use of diction and descriptions, he criticizes the American dream for transformation of new world America from an untainted frontier to a corrupted industrialized society. In the novel, Fitzgerald never mentions the phase “American Dream,” however the idea is significant to the story.

Read More

More about The Great Gatsby Dust Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document